• • New Hovercraft Project On The Way
  • UH-13P Back from Paint
  • UH-13P Update
  • Lift Duct moves forward
  • Spring Break Progress
  • Week of Progress
  • First look at Lift Duct on Hull
  • Laminating Problems
  • Lift duct takes shape
  • Lift duct may eventualy get finished

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  • Thrust

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The new school year has begun and there is a new project beginning. This year the new students will be building a UH-14P. The craft is a little larger than last year’s UH-13P. We will also be modifying the design to include a second engine for the lift system. This will dramatically simplify the system for us. We will be able to eliminate the long belt that ran from the rear engine to the lift duct as well as the idler pulleys.

Parts have been ordered. We will be beginning construction in about two weeks.

The craft has come back from United Auto Collision where they did great job as always. We decided on a blue craft with a spray-on bed liner material for the horizontal surfaces to prevent someone from slipping when boarding or disembarking. I’ll publish pictures when the craft is fully reassembled.

You can see we didn’t keep up the site like we should have. Things got incredibly hectic near the end of the project and it fell between the cracks. We have learned a lot and are looking forward to documenting the build better the next time through. We had successful test on lake Ogletree. What a great thing to see a craft built from scratch by High School students work properly. It was great. A few days later we brought he craft to the school and demonstrated it all day for students. It was during this time we discovered the magnetic attraction between hovercraft and trees. Things still ran well until the last few minutes of the day when a landing skid was partially knocked off. We have repaired the craft and sent it to the body shop for paint.

This week we came in to see the inside of the duct had expanded with the foam used to attatch it to the deck. We had to cut off a section of fiberglass and foam to fix the problem. We began the process of mounting the shaft for the fan and mounting the pulleys on the duct. On Thursday we cut a section of the lift duct out and reglassed the parts together. we did this to decrease the height of the duct to allow for the siding to be put on.

With the help of some very dedicated students we made some progress this week. Monday Morning we had 4 students working on the craft by 8:15 AM during their spring break. It was great to see us have more than 1 hour at a time to give to the craft. We got a lot done. By about 1:00 PM every part of the craft had something wet on it so we broke it off for the day.

Thursday we met again at 8:00 AM and did a good bit. Including taking a break for a hardware store run. This was to let the epoxy we had applied to several parts of the craft to set up some before continuing. My goal for spring break was to have the two ducts mounted to the craft. We didn’t quite get there, but we did get the lift duct mounted with expandable foam before we left for the day about 3:00 PM.

Over all it was a very productive spring break thanks to some willing students and the added time afforded by not trekking back and forth to the school.

This was a very good week for the deck team. Lots of hard and quick work helped us aproach finishing the deck. We fixed the plywood lamination and made sure there were no defects. Next, we ran a router around the edge of the deck to make the plywood flush with the skirt attach strips. Then we put Bondo in all of the gaps of the plywood and sanded everything to a smooth and consistent finish. After completing the lamination process, we attached the landing skids by brushing epoxy in between the landing skids and deck and then we placed the entire deck in our new vacuum bag that V2 Composites supplied for us. After the epoxy has set, the deck should be complete for the most part.

This week was a slow week because, for a few days, we did not have a full crew. There was some vary important things that did get done though. One was the removing of extra foam so that the duct could sit at 30^o from the deck. The other was the installation of the 1×6’s. This will support the fan, so there was alot of measuring and trimming and re-measuring and some more trimming.  I am going to try to add pictures over spring break.

This week, we made an effort to laminate the foam deck with 1/8″ plywood. We placed epoxy in between the plywood and the foam and then layed the plywood on top of the foam. Then, we put the entire deck into a vacuum bag to ensure that the plywood had equal pressure on it while the epoxy hardened. We allowed it to harden over night and when we took it out of the vacuum bag, there was a problem. The epoxy had not done its job in a few places (on outer edge and middle). So, we pulled up some of the plywood and are in the process of epoxying it back down.

We made alot of progress this week. The lift duct has been constructed using layers of fiberglass epoxied to take the shape of the duct. It is fairly rigid and we believe it is the best answer to our problems. On Thursday we wrapped the fiberglass duct in 2-inch foam to complete the shape. We arn’t quite shure how this is going to turn out due difficulties with getting the glass to properly form to the foam. We are all hoping this will work

The lift group might have finaly found a material that will work. After struggleing with the 1/8 in plywood for a month, we gave up on that and have moved on. Our solution was found using layers of fiberglass as the inner material to provide durability to the duct. We hope this will finaly work. Our lift fan is mostly done, it is completely epoxied and all that remains is balancing. Our lift duct may get done eventualy, but dont hold your breath

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